what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions come to the breakthrough that sort of to be made who can you trust no one who is imbued with a global mission to receive where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the clock is ticking for occupy l.a. how much longer will the l.a.p.d. allow protesters i think their voices heard outside of city hall desperate times call for desperate measures that are lies and sabotage really the only hope left for the g.o.p. in wisconsin as they try to battle efforts to recall governor scott walker and into night's daily take if money is speech then why isn't campaign here. now in nearly forty eight hours past their addiction deadline occupy los angeles is

still camped outside city hall and they're getting some reinforcements patriots patriots from occupy san diego who've had their fair share of clashes with the police joined up with the occupation in l.a. today one was also getting more support according to a new field poll fifty eight percent of californians agree with the cause motivating occupy wall street but despite all this good news it still appears the question in los angeles is not a matter of if occupy l.a. will be shut down but a matter of when it will be shut down for more on what's going on in los angeles currently the nation's oldest and largest occupation joins me he's a filmmaker co-founder of a coffee party usa eric welcome to the program. thanks for having me thanks for joining us you're in l.a. for the vixen deadline what did you see. this last night well i did describe it as the most suspenseful and i guess frightening moments i've ever experienced i mean imagine this you are standing behind

a line of armed police officers with helmets and baton and behind them are hundreds more and we've been warned that if we don't leave the intersection in the street we will be arrested and behind me i'm talking about you know maybe one hundred two hundred people maybe more some of whom understand this some of them do not some of whom have decided that if the police say i have to get off the street then darn it i will not get off the street so i was i was very concerned that the sight of hundreds of armed police officers marching toward us was going to create chaos and maybe a little bit of bravado or sort of a confrontational stance from the protesters and so just waiting for that to happen it was scary and when it did i mean the police officers actually didn't march like i imagine that they would they they moved in sort of a less aggressive way not quickly they didn't have their weapons raised they weren't in any kind of formation but what did ensue was we had basically

a line where we were all pushed to the curb on the occupy camp side and the police were right in front of us the gutters with a part and there were a few skirmishes where someone was arrested objects were thrown over the crowd into the police line and i mean luckily the l.a.p.d. performed incredibly professionally and the protesters for the most part maintain their composure at least physically many of them were a little bit out of sorts in terms of their emotions or the words that they spoke and i think it was a win win night for the occupy camp and also for l.a.p.d. and that's a win for the community because i do think that all of this politicization of police work is really threatening to undermine trust between law enforcement and the community large at. and that's bad news for everybody because it makes it much harder to keep keep a community safe when there's conflict and mistrust well and it seems that in some communities there has been you know a

a reasonable relationship between the police in the in the local occupy groups and in other communities it's just been plain old flat out hostile. parallel los angeles it's it the police are behaving professionally so far do you do you attribute those to the the nature or behavior of the occupy group of the police and or their management there the police management or mer. or what what's the dynamic at work here that that caused oakland for example the meltdown in l.a. to be frankly you know professional or courteous is probably. not quite the right word but on both sides. well it's a complex relationship of trust in oakland with grand murder not so long ago and really just a long history of distrust between law enforcement and in particular communities of color and communities that support communities of color that situation was more

likely to devolve whereas in los angeles after you know the watts riots and the rodney king riots the police has really in the last ten years maybe more they have l.a.p.d. has instituted something called community policing which seeks to form that relationship where you're working together to keep your community safe and they believe in it they really do believe in it and so i think that they understand that there's so much at stake not just at this camp where people are in danger but also in the community at large if the l.a.p.d. begins to have a reputation like unfortunately the oakland police has today it makes it harder for them to solve crimes because who's going to want to report a crime or assist in solving a crime if you don't believe in the integrity of the police or their ability to apply the law equally to all communities is there is there an appropriate role for the police in with the in the occupy encampments for example. helping

you know protect people out here or more have the have the occupy movements tried to police themselves and keep the police you know how does that dynamic work. well i've been covering occupy d.c. primarily i'm here for the holidays in occupy d.c. during the first i'd say six weeks the relationship between law enforcement and the protesters was was dynamite and in the police would honk their horns in support it actually started to devolve when fox news and other one percent media outlets began to run with the story that occupy d.c. had pushed old ladies down the stairs during the koch brothers convention now i don't i don't think it was a good idea for occupy d.c. to go to the koch brothers convention where some of the mustang three people in the united states were all you know convened in one place but the video shows and if you go to coffee party usa dot com you can see a video that i created the video very clearly shows that those women were pushed to

the ground by members of the koch brothers convention participants in the koch brothers convention who were upset that the human chain was blocking their way and they finally just lost their cool but because that story was repeated many times they put pressure on the police chief in washington d.c. to declare the occupy d.c. is no longer a peaceful movement that really annoyed the people in the camp and then they had a new outlook toward law enforcement when law enforcement then began coming to camp to look for a suspect in a completely unrelated case but there was a new kind of confrontation and really the second most disturbing situation i've ever seen was at occupy d.c. just a few days after the police chief made that statement so it's really it's a complex and delicate dance and to have news news organizations political organizations disguised as news organizations try to inject their political agenda into the relationship of law enforcement to the community i think it's irresponsible and i think we should hold them accountable not just on the right by

the way but also on the left you talking about g.o.p. t.v. fox news on the left the people. news and all of their consumers who have learned how to filter information in that very same way. does it help or hurt my political agenda is the question they ask rather than is it accurate or verifiable so all of the fox news consumers have now become whether it's tea party activists or bloggers whatever they become active participants sort of like holcomb eniac and their relationship going to professional wrestling so area but there's also that also happens on the left and so one of the things that really aggravated me and concerned me was the story that i believe started with the blogger for san francisco bay guardian that police executives research forum which is actually a very progressive community policing organization that has provided tremendous leadership on the immigration issue was somehow behind this conspiracy series theory that cracks down on everybody seventeen easily and bloodies people up and

intimidate them out of out of participating in these protests it was just completely false but it just got repeated millions of times and people took it inside the san francisco bay guardian as a source when i couldn't even get the big guardian to to stand by this story but eric i'm talking earlier with that in mind works and we've we've run out of time and joshua has done a great job of going to debunking that over adulterer net as well yes i think you know you talked about eric byler thank you so being with us tonight thank you tom i do appreciate it according to los angeles times occupy l.a. filed a court complaint yesterday arguing that the city's looming crackdown represents an assault on the first amendment i'll have more on that aspect of the occupy movement internets daily take. just. up with the good the bad out of the very very spot agendas silly ugly the good.

norm stamper as the former police chief in seattle's stamper has a perspective we should all listen to when it comes to the crackdown on occupy wall street referring to the police using current chemical weapons against peaceful patriots stamper said it is clearly an abuse of tear gas when it is used against passive demonstrators who are taking part in acts of civil disobedience which are such a rich part of our democracy we should recognize that we are a tool of the community of community in the advancement of public safety and good police today have lost sight of their purpose they have and we need more cops like norm stamper to help them realize the bad steve doocy g.o.p. t.v.'s fox and friends was at it again this morning rejoicing over congressman barney frank's decision to retire next year and to see did a little rewriting history to try to pin the blame for the two thousand and eight financial meltdown on you guessed it barney frank. so he's proud of dodd frank

which happened after the collapse but by virtue of the fact that he was the nation's leading protector of fannie and freddie running up to the collapse we knew when you examine the story if you had to put one face to the catastrophe that was two thousand and eight it would probably be barney frank not wall street not lloyd banks blankfein not george w. bush not hank paulson who is passing along a little inside information to his buddies but barney frank is that occupy wall street you got the wrong guys that barney franks is another case of g.o.p. t.v.'s rewrite of exactly how the financial crisis started they report you misled and a very very ugly scottsdale gun club what better way to get the christmas spirit than the letter. children pose for pictures with santa claus and assault rifles that's right in what the scottsdale gun club is calling a family event called center the machine guns kids get to play with actual pistols shotguns and rifles that are often bigger than they are before telling santa what

they want for christmas the gun club even encourages families to try out the machine guns i guess little kids now can make extra sure that santa brings them everything they want and that's very very. crazy alert the very very frosty the snowman christmas parade in chestertown maryland turned ugly over the weekend and frosty the snowman was arrested for allegedly scuffling with police and kicking a police dog crazy according to reports fifty two year old kevin michael walsh was dressed up as frosty in the parade for the last ten years became enraged when a police officer tried to escort him away from the crowd it's unclear if police subdued frosty by removing his magic hat but one thing is clear with frosty out of the picture bill o'reilly's war on christmas has officially begun. oh

i just told i was a dummy happy soul with a car in college i ran the do you know don't drive it on a cold frosty the snowman and it was a retailer saying it was but you know know about the children know how we created to live one day their money coming up in tonight's daily take all have some advice for the ninety nine percenters but huge amounts of protest across the country time to rethink your makeshift shelter of choice. is what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians to make decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called fashion when nobody dares to ask we do you are see question more.

each day that goes by progressives in wisconsin get one step closer to their older goal recalling governor scott walker already the recall effort has collected more than three hundred thousand signatures more than half way to collecting the necessary five hundred forty thousand signatures that can trigger a recall and sensing they're fighting

a losing battle republicans in scott walker sympathizers in wisconsin are resorting to more desperate and underhanded tactics for the latest on the scott walker recall sabotage effort while chris borrowers to the studio he's a campaign director the daily codes chris welcome back and paramount great to have you with us so what's the latest strategy that the republicans are using to try and deal real this thing and keep. keep scottie boy here and in power the latest in a long line of underhanded sabotage effort that's been going on sort of bubbling up on facebook other places with the conservative grassroots has been a fake web site purporting to be part related to occupy madison in wisconsin that was that was claiming that all the recall signatures had been gathered in the recall drive was over so there's no need for anyone to to go out and gather any more signatures to earlier and they're going to yes it's all does go home and the web site was was had nothing to do with any of the local occupy movements in

wisconsin and eventually its content was taken down because it was deemed full. and now the website owners have instead decided to redirect their website to google searches for pornographic material so the it was occupied dash madison dot com yes that was another web site. has anybody gone to who is and does a look up and found out who owns that website where this come from there's there's been some rumors going on line people claiming you know that they have sources with them yet but it still hasn't been revealed at this time and got a they've got a what's a protected ip or whatever it's called they've got a yeah most it still might come out there's there's there's there's a blogger in wisconsin who says he's been talking to someone who knows it's an anonymous source but at this point it still hasn't been revealed that doesn't mean that it won't because i was we've seen actually some previous sabotage efforts where in two cases once in madison another time in a town called river falls a couple of excuse me a couple of conservative walkers supporters went up to sign recall petitions

claiming that they were you know like they they they they supported the recall and then they destroyed the recall petitions which which is actually a class one felony in in wisconsin and the police in both cases are looking into both of those incidents and then they they do have lead so it's possible that the same thing will happen on this website and ino you wonder about these things it's i used to live in portland oregon and there that we had. ended up getting blown up but we had. voter own elections for city council and if you could get a certain number of signatures and you know thousand people and five dollars each then you could get your name on the ballot and there was one candidate in particular who concert is really didn't like and so they were signing her ballots like crazy and signing them with names like donald duck you know or joe blow things like that and sometimes you know names that looked good and so they thought they had enough to add actually turned out that they had enough names because they got

but the overage but is. that kind of thing going on i mean i've heard reports about you know destroying petitions but that's destroying petitions is a felony is it a felony to put a phony name on one or door to to sign up falsely it's certainly illegal i'm not sure if it's a felony in the state of wisconsin but the yes there's been a large number of people who have both been looking to you know sign phony names which which can potentially invalidated entire petition sheet there's only five names perpetrations it so so that wouldn't be too devastating especially at the remarkable rate at which the grassroots activists are gathering signatures in wisconsin actually one every three point five seconds since they started and in the paces in slowing down the main efforts that you see people talking about on facebook and conservatives and in comment sections of the news articles is they want to go out and gather recall petitions themselves and then burn them or at least one person said that you know he'd be equally keep his entire house he did

for the for what's a very cold winter in wisconsin by burning the number of fake recall petitions he i mean by by burning the number of recall petitions that he plans to gather and someone else you know there's literally dozens of posts like this but. i think they're going to have a difficult time doing this because every recall petition gather in wisconsin has an official lanyard they're out in public at official recall stations with several other volunteers and then all the recall petitions in the end go back to united wisconsin which is the coalition umbrella group which is running it and so they're very secure so so there's definitely been a lot of efforts but apart from perhaps destroying a few petitions so far they haven't been able to see it slow down simply because there's so much positive activism for the recall in this this raises another question question chris the. the walker administration and that fits walker

stand. group the brothers who run the house and senate there. have passed legislation which is going to make it. difficult if not impossible for thousands of people to vote who would otherwise have been eligible to vote in wisconsin particular students and college students since and so i'm wondering are those people eligible to vote right now and therefore they can sign a petition but they won't be eligible to vote when the election happens or will they still be eligible to vote when the election happens but they won't be eligible to vote in november two thousand and twelve or you know how does that play into this equation well they're still eligible to vote it's not a question of like they they've been deemed ineligible to vote what they have to do is bring an identification to the polls even though for like the original legislation that passed on this it said that college i.d.'s weren't going to be

good enough fortunately the wisconsin government a accountability board has now ruled that actually college i.d.'s will be good enough and the university of wisconsin system is actually going to issue free identifications that will meet the wisconsin government accountability board standards so so they still going to be a lot of people who don't know about the new rules and they voted before actually they're just going to show up low income voters in urban areas where not only do they now have to have an idea in order to vote department of motor vehicles in these areas are being closed down at the same time and in other places employees have been fired from the department of motor vehicles for telling their their fellow employees that they have to issue free i.d.'s and so in the in the half literally half minute we have left is this going to be a factor in this election this disenfranchise oh i think it won't be a factor in the recall drive because they're going to get enough signatures you know if you have the current base that's going it will definitely be

a factor in the election i mean it's. going to cost you know that whoever the democratic candidate ends up being a couple of tenths of a percent in an election this close is what's happening it was constant that that could certainly tip the balance and so it's going to take a lot of work to make sure that doesn't happen that's remarkable chris thanks so much for being with us and it's always great to if you want to find out how you can get involved the recall effort and push back against the republican plans to undermine democracy in wisconsin check out the website united wisconsin dot com. so what's the difference between this little piece of green fabric and actually people think it's paper but it's actually fabric and this piece of this woman's green on this side and this piece of green fabric sure this is

a dollar bill and you can buy stuff with it and this is a tent and you can sleep in it but they're both made from cotton at their core actually are dollar bills are and they're completely different there's a dollar bill at the temp but according to our courts there's another difference between this little piece of green fabric known as a dollar and this giant piece of green fabric known as a tent that you might not be aware of and that is according to five men on our supreme court this represents free speech and this at least so far thousands. right now occupy l.a. is trying to stop a looming police crackdown against its encampment the largest and oldest surviving one in the nation and the movement is reaching out to the courts to help arguing that if the police the victim it will be quote an unconstitutional deprivation of

access to the traditional public forum for first amendment activity and a quote as in occupy or camping out for political purposes is or should be considered a form of protected free speech we don't know how the courts in l.a. will rule but going off a court decision in new york a couple of weeks ago it doesn't look good for the occupy movement after mer bloomberg midnight raid on zuccotti park and why p.t. officers prevented occupiers from bringing any camping gear back into the park and sleeping bags no tents no tarps nothing occupy wall street took that decision to court with a lawyer for the movement arguing that the tents and tarps are a form of free speech noting the power of the symbolic speech is that it's a twenty four occupation and twenty four hour occupation this conveys a special message but manhattan supreme court justice michael stallman did not agree he ruled in favor bloomberg upholding the ban on camping gear claiming that

occupy wall street had failed to make a case that tents are a form of free speech case closed. but let's rewind back to one thousand nine hundred six the case of buckley versus vallejo when the high court ruled that money is little green pieces of mostly cotton fabric that money is a form of free speech protected under the first court said discussion of public issues in debate our integrity to the operation of the system of government established by our constitution the first amendment affords the broadest possible protection of such political expression in order to assure unfettered exchange of ideas for the bringing about a political and social changes desired by the people under the broadest possible protection of political expression according to the court this is speech one speech that decision was up held expanded in the supreme court just last year and

citizens united decision ruled that money is in fact speech and even certain speakers a phrase from the ruling by corporations can use this to make political statements there just as kennedy wrote the creative dynamic inherent in the concept of free expression counsels against upholding a law that restricts political speech in certain media or by certain speakers so why is it going off the decision by the high court in buckley versus vallejo that when political expression is given the broadest possible protection this people piece of paper is protected as a people a piece of cotton but a tent is not and why is it one right one one recognizing the creative dynamic of free expression that again money is protected but tents are not i think the answer is actually fairly obvious corporations have a lot of ace a lot of money and not a lot of sense the ironic thing is occupy wall street is demonstrating in large

part against these two court cases buckley and citizens united against the idea that money is speech. so in essence rulings the big green pieces of fabric are not a form of free speech it's just fine as long as the court is consistent and rules that little green pieces of fabric are not speech either but until that happens until a court treats all fabric in the same way that occupy wall street has to keep camp you know and my tip to the movement is simple start building your tenths of a stitch together dollar bills as the big picture for more information the stories we covered visit our web sites of thom hartmann dot com free speech to organize dot com also check out our two you tube channels or links to tom hartman dot com also target dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy begins with you when you show up when you participate get

out there get active tag your it occupy something.